What is the most powerful creature in middle earth besides valar?

Ungoliant in Middle Earth at the same time as Sauron. The power of sea creatures (or the things below Moria) are virtually or completely unknown. Sauron would be sitting above Balrog level in your list. Dragons are also contentious, as it depends which dragon you are talking about specifically.

Well sure Sauron would be at the top, but I assumed we were talking about everything below him that was not a key Ainur diety.

Wizards would be along with Balrogs and Dragons I think.
The Sea monsters and such would most likely be deadly and powerful, but don't really play much of part in the stories.
I sort of ranked my list into tiers - something of a higher tier could generally always beat something of a lower tier, but within in a tier it would depend on the particulars. A huge troll might kill a small Mumakill, but an ancient Ent might be more powerful than either, or vice versa.

I would put Eagles in the middle tier as well, and then you have ghosts and werewolves and such. Lotta rare encounters hard to nail down exactly.

Tolkien really power scaled the balrogs later on. Early versions had them in much higher numbers and more like Super-trolls than how deadly they ended up.

Forgot Shelob.. def middle tier as well. Nowhere near as powerful as Ungoliant, but deadlier than the spiders in the Hobbit which would be bottom tier.
I can't see any scenario where Shelob would solo a dragon or Balrog, but then again creatures do whatever the fuck Tolkien decided whenever he wanted.
It's hard to envision Elven/Dwarven, and Humna lords ever killing a Balrog, yet it did happen once or twice.

Tolkien wasnt a physicist
simple as

Sauron would get fucked by Ungoliant. Morgoth even got his shit rocked by her. Tom is also far more powerful, but them fighting really doesn't make sense as a hypothetical. Tom doesn't fight and Sauron would eventually just passively rot away his domain until he lost his power. Even that is hypothetical.

Elves were retardedly strong whenever Tolkien felt like they should be. If you can permanently main the Satan of your universe, you pretty much have a fighting chance against almost everything.

How Ungoliant was more powerful than the greatest Ainar was sort of confusing, considering that all the known Ainar manifested as identifiable beings even before the creation of Arda.
I suppose she represented some elemental aspect of creation such as emptiness, darkness and hunger etc. Perhaps given physical form from Eru Ilúvatar who never bothered to mention it to the Ainar lol. Or she was some entity that emerged as a side effect of all the mad mojo that morgoth has unleashed.

I guess it doesn't really matter.
She was a big nasty hungry sassy black bitch. Many such cases.

The unknown nameless horrors were created out of the discordance between Eru's music and Melkor's music. They're embodied evil and chaos.

theres no way that last dragon was THAT fuckoff big, and some lone dude killed it
thats some shitty writing if thats truly the case

She was a Lovecraftian abomination that existed before LOTR's universe. It's like comparing Norse gods and Shub-Niggurth.

It wasn't that big.

>Sir Morgoth has the Dragon Launch Codes
>Eru saves us all
>Alcalagon nose dives Middle Earth

He got dabbed hard and then he fell and destroyed some mountains so he beeg

I dont like that depiction of Glaurung he looks way too silly

>Glaurung
Damn, I gotta reread Children of Hurin, that book is kino.